Twig

by wildbow

  “It’s a deal,” Emmett said. “But it still would have been a deal if you hadn’t done the complicated things with right times and right places.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes. I trust you, and I think you trust us. You were a Lamb.”

  Were. Past tense.

  If he even had a glimmer of how much of a punch to the gut that was, given recent events…

  I had to bite my tongue.

  Emmett, mercifully, started to explain. “My parents gave custody of me over to the Academy to see if the Academy could save me. They’d rather never see me again and give me a chance than me have no chance. The Academy started to work on me right away.”

  “You said that much before, essentially,” I said.

  “Think they probably did the same thing to you, before giving you Wyvern. To Jamie, before hooking him up to Caterpillar.”

  I remained silent.

  “They talked about things while I was in the room. Things they thought I would forget. They had an argument once, about how to handle my file as it pertained to the block.”

  “The block,” I said, committing it to memory. Which made me think… “Memory block, or—”

  “Block, as in a place. They were very concerned about sanctions and losing their place in the Academy. One man wanted to send me there, just to be safe. Another wanted to send the file there, along with a letter explaining their approach to my case.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Gomer’s Island.”

  “New Amsterdam,” I said. I closed my eyes. It had to be just about the biggest possible single location to damn well have to search.

  “Sylvester,” Emmett said. “The drug that they gave me to try and alter my memory? It came from the same place.”

  “The Island.”

  “Yes.”

  That painted more of a picture. It was like the Academies to centralize activities of a given sort. Had they centralized the kidnapping and child-experimentation angle? At least partially?

  “Do you know why I’m telling you this?” Emmett asked.

  “Lillian,” I said. Saying her name hurt. I kept flashing back to that look on her face, the sound of her voice as she’d said she didn’t like the person she was when she was with me.

  “No,” Emmett said, his voice taking me away from that dark spiral-shaped line of thinking.

  I listened, waiting.

  “When I told the other Lambs what I knew, and when I heard them talking about what the Baron and you had spoken about. They agreed. This is important. This should stop. They, we were unanimous.”

  I nodded, knowing he couldn’t see.

  “You’re going to go there. We know this,” Emmett said. “And we’re going to follow you. But if you do escape from us again, and if you do find some answers or hold bad people accountable…”

  “…It’s not a bad thing?” I asked.

  He was silent, on the other side of the wall.

  Was it because he was naturally taciturn, and he’d already uttered the three hundred and sixty-five words he was permitted for the year, or because there was a streak of loyalty in him that kept him from finishing the thought?

  “Noted,” I said.

  The emotional turmoil crystallized in my gut, pushed down until it compressed into something hard-edged, heavy, and painful to bear. I had a goal. Something to occupy my attention.

  “I’m sorry your time with Lillian didn’t go well,” Emmett said.

  My head snapped around. That jagged, black mess of emotion in my middle lurched skyward, catching my breath, my heart, and bringing everything into sharp relief.

  I froze. I willed it all to stop. If I didn’t move, didn’t think, then it wouldn’t hurt.

  Lillian is already back with them.

  Just like that.

  “Pierre?”

  “Already free. I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer, before.”

  “And—”

  “Jamie is free. Elsewhere.”

  I winced at that.

  This information he was so freely giving was… what? Pity?

  No. I somehow couldn’t imagine Emmett giving me this of his own will. Nor would he be so condescending to poor, broken, sad Sylvester. I didn’t get the impression that that was how he thought or acted.

  Perhaps Lillian had asked this of him. I could see that. I could see her treating it as an apology to me, when an apology wasn’t even expected or needed.

  I wanted to scream in frustration, let all the feelings out. Instead, I let that bristling ugliness sink slowly from my chest cavity to the lowest part of my stomach.

  “You’re giving me a headstart?” I asked, to break the silence.

  “Yes. We have to talk to the Academy either way.”

  I processed that, thinking.

  Lillian was supposed to be kept away from the Lambs for two days. But they were giving me the headstart that that would have afforded me. They had presumably freed Pierre, and they were giving me the info I’d wanted without a fight.

  Yes. Between Jamie and Lillian, they were extending a kind of apology.

  “I keep thinking that you’re going to abruptly leave,” Emmett said. “Will you let me know when you do?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m not much of a talker.”

  I smiled to myself. “I know.”

  I would have to leave soon. The fear of being spotted and caught by other forces was only part of it. Another part, knowing that Lillian was somewhere in this very building, and Jamie was somewhere outside of it, it meant I had to leave if I wanted to get away from this.

  “Emmett,” I said. “I need favors. And I know I’m not in a position to bargain.”

  I felt so far from the mighty Lamb that I’d painted myself to be, as I’d taunted them all.

  “I’d have to hear the favors before agreeing.”

  “Can you tell me if you told Jamie any of what you told me? About Gomer’s Island, in New Amsterdam?”

  “No. The conversation with him was brief. He—”

  “I don’t want to know,” I said. “Please. No is enough.”

  “That might have been the first time in years that I’ve been interrupted,” Emmett mused aloud. “Or been told I’m talking too much.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mm,” Emmett grunted.

  I wanted to ask him not to tell Jamie. To keep it a secret and to let me go.

  I was aware of how monumentally unfair it was of me to do that. To black Jamie out.

  “Did it sound like he said goodbye?” I asked. “Like he was leaving? Or that he had plans?”

  “Do you want the long answer or the short one?”

  “Short,” I said, hating myself for my cowardice.

  “Then yes, to all three questions.”

  I nodded, and made sure my exhalation of relief was silent, and that Emmett wouldn’t hear.

  “The city. In case it wasn’t clear, two days here should be enough time to build a compelling case to bring back to Radham. Most of it has been uprooted or disturbed enough it shouldn’t take much looking to find. There’s a collection of files and folders you can use in the cellar of the Devil’s headquarters. His underlings can point the way to the building. Was the auditorium or something? Bookstore? My memory isn’t strong. But once you get that, you should be able to control the city.”

  “Mm.”

  “The orphanage is almost done as a project. It has two people in charge, it has some children to get started, but still needs some staff and organization. I left it incomplete on purpose. Put your own personal touches on it, wrap it up? Use the control that the Devil’s papers give. I won’t say it will only take a few days to make the orphanage operational, but they are still delivering mail, and you should be able to get it started on the right foot. If you have to, sell it to the Academy as a way to keep tabs on me, because I’m going to be smuggling kids in need to that place and places like it soon.”

  “Okay, Syl
vester. We already talked a little about that.”

  I nodded.

  “Because that’s related to how we got started. Working with the mice, learning from them, teaching them. It’s important.”

  “I think they know it’s important, Sylvester. It sounded like it.”

  I swallowed around the lump in my throat.

  “I’m leaving now, Emmett.”

  “Goodbye, Sylvester. It was interesting to meet you.”

  I hopped down from my perch to the road below, where I was joined by the host of spectres, leaving behind the warm building.

  ☙

  “Shirley gets us settled. She has legitimacy, she’s not a fugitive, Sylvester gives her the money, and focuses on starting the investigation. Probably with the mice.”

  “Trouble is, you have to look at how complicated New Amsterdam is as a city,” Jamie said. “It’s a jarring city, an anachorism. The seat of the Academy’s power in the Crown States, and, just as an example…”

  He hesitated, in that way that he used to do, trying to dredge up the information.

  Evette picked up the slack. “The very name, New Amsterdam.”

  “Yes,” Jamie said. “That. When they won the war for the Crown States, they took a city named after an English city, and gave it its original name. Just to show that they could, to display that control. Even if it made the city sound less Crown and more foreign.”

  Gordon spoke, “Or the fact that it’s where the Nobles and Academy elite gather, the, as you say, seat of the Academy’s power in the Crown States, and yet it’s one of the places where the Academy’s hold is weakest. Too big, too unwieldy.”

  “Too messy,” Evette said, smiling.

  The door at the far end of the car arrived.

  “Shirley!” Helen perked up. “And tea! And treats!”

  Then, just as fast, she was deathly serious. The Lambs, as a group, rose to their feet.

  They were reacting to something I couldn’t see. Prey instinct was giving me some miniscule details, something about the weight of the footsteps, the sounds or lack thereof, or that I was belatedly putting things together and realizing that Shirley should have been back by now.

  “Not tea,” Helen said, as I let my feet drop to the floor and stood.

  Crown Police? Was I caught?

  As I moved toward the aisle, I could see them.

  Not police after all.

  Just seven other passengers, going to the same place I was.

  So this was what the conductor had been saying when he’d said we might have to leave the car to make room. I’d thought military, but no.

  Seven young men and women, adolescents, to look at them. All tall, most gorgeous, and all wearing the finest and most modern fashions I’d seen, no doubt custom made to their individual forms. They had intensity in their eyes and cold, mask-like expressions.

  “Window,” Gordon said.

  I bolted. The window was open, and the train was going full-speed. The fact that I could see the upper halves of trees and not the bottom halves suggested it was a slope, and it was a fall that was likely to kill me.

  Preferable to this.

  One hand on the side of the window, one hand on the bottom, I moved to launch myself out.

  The hook-end of a cane caught me by the neck. I was wrenched back, stumbling, then neatly deposited in the middle of the three seats. The one that Jamie had been sitting in.

  The young noble took a seat opposite me. He raised a long leg and propped one foot up on the seat to my left, then moved his cane so it was the other way around, bottom end facing me.

  I moved to escape, and the cane caught me again. I froze, pinned where I was, the end of the cane pressing against my guzzler’s knot.

  “Sy’s not at his best,” Helen commented, from the sidelines.

  “He really, really, really isn’t,” Gordon said.

  Go fuck your dead self, Gordon.

  “I think…” Jamie said, weighing his words, “I think we’re on point, here.”

  “Provided he and Shirley survive the remainder of this train journey,” Evette commented.

  Previous Next

  Thicker than Water—14.2

  “Fugitive,” the noble said.

  “Ah,” Gordon said. “That’s no good.”

  I exhaled, as much as I was able, with the cane pressing against my throat.

  The young man who was sitting across from me looked as though he had just had a team of hairdressers, a barber, and a tailor just finish working on him. His black hair was slicked back, the faint messiness at the front of his hair and over his ears looked sculpted. It was late, but his chin was clean of even the shadow of stubble. Chin and cheekbones were sculpted, giving his face a mask-like appearance that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He wore a white collared shirt with ornate silver trim at the edges of the collar, a tie, vest, and a long black coat. The silver ornamentation extended to his cufflinks, embossed buttons, the buckles of his shoes, and, now that I looked, to the irises of his eyes.

  He was the biggest threat, so I fixed the whole of my attention on him.

  “What a shame,” he said. “By bringing you in, we’re denying a good citizen the ability to do the same. There was good money placed on you, sir. Good money the Crown was willing to part with, a sum that could have raised someone up from obscurity to aristocracy.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could kill them all?” Helen asked. “Make a lovely bloody mess.”

  “Not practical,” Gordon said. “We need to play along for now. We kill them later.”

  “Lord Monte,” one of the two girls in the group spoke, with a posh accent that pronounced ‘Monte’ as “Mont-ay’. I didn’t take my eyes off of ‘Monte’ as she continued, “If you talk about the citizens of the Crown in that way, they might get offended.”

  She made it sound like play. As if to set up Monte for a retort, a joke at the citizen’s expenses.

  But he was more focused on me than on verbal wordplay or making light of the citizen’s feelings.

  “You don’t look like much, do you?” Monte with the silver ornamentation spoke, studying me. “But you certainly did something to deserve being worth that reward money.”

  Jamie’s voice overlapped with his, “Think. Gordon’s right, we need to play along, and we’re getting swept up in the observations without picking out the things we can use. You used Wyvern to shut out the world, Sy, but we need you to access the world again.”

  I stared into Monte’s silver eyes, and I was reminded of how I’d met Lillian’s, when she and I had been so close. It was a painful reminder, but it was a barb that helped wake me up to reality, connect this situation to the way I’d been thinking there.

  The emotional equivalent of reaching out, seizing a knife by the blade, and squeezing.

  Something must have changed in my expression, because Monte said, “There you are.”

  “Good evening,” I said.

  “Titles!” Jamie urged.

  “No titles,” Evette said. Evette was now behind Monte’s seat, arms folded over the top of the seats. Her chin had been resting on her forearm, but now her head was raised just enough to let her talk. “Look at him, look at them. They’re deferring. The woman, the way she talked, you know He’s the leader of this pack. Your instincts said to focus on him for a reason.”

  Whatever the case, the window of opportunity had passed.

  The cane moved from my guzzler’s knot to the side. It jerked, pressing in hard, just beside my windpipe. Had it been sharp, a thrust of that force would have gone right through my neck to the seat behind me.

  He knew where nerve clusters, veins, and arteries were, I was guessing.

  “Customarily,” Monte said. “One addresses a noble lord in a more appropriate manner.”

  Already, my vision was suffering for the continued press of the cane. It was crumbling to black at the edges, especially around my left eye.

  “Stay strong, he won’t kill you this qui
ckly,” Gordon said. “Bend the knee, Sy.”

  “Bend the knee,” Jamie echoed.

  I looked up at Evette. Her chin rested on her arm, now. She only smiled.

  “Ah,” I managed.

  Monte let up with the cane. I took a second to let my vision start to go back to normal, the light returning at the periphery.

  “My apologies,” I said.

  Monte declined his head in acknowledgement of my apology.

  “Good evening to you,” I said, looking again at Evette. “Monte.”

  The cane stabbed forward before I was even done uttering the word. Fast reflexes. The butt end of it thrust past my teeth and into my open mouth, then stabbed at the soft flesh at the back of my throat.

  My eyes went wide. The contact there and the natural physiological reactions mandated that I gag and upchuck, but the fact that I hadn’t eaten in recent memory, giving my lunch to Shirley instead, and the fact that I’d dulled my senses and put myself into a kind of hibernation mode meant I was only barely able to repress my reaction.

  My hands went out, gripping the armrests to either side of me, as he pressed hard, the back of my neck being compressed against my pillowed seat back.

  He kept me like that, my breath coming in short, pained gasps, while he continued to stare me down. The others stood on the sidelines, quiet and analytical. Even bemused.

  “I don’t think Evette gives very good advice,” Ashton commented.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Gordon said. He gave Evette a pointed look. “Why are you even here?”

  Evette spoke, “You’re all here for Sy, you’re paying attention to him, you know him. I’m more focused on them. You’re in lockstep, you work together, and one of us has to be a little unconventional.”

  Distant, sitting back, the problems beyond. That made a degree of sense.

  Monte might have sensed that my focus was elsewhere, because he rotated the cane, still pressing it against the soft tissue at the back of my throat. I’d already been bleeding, no doubt, but now there was actual damage. He was grinding the tissue there much as someone might do to make absolutely sure that the bug underfoot was being extinguished.

  “Ow,” Helen said. Jamie had his face in one hand, beside her.